Surely you open them first in case there's any money in them?

We've been cutting back our list the last few years. It's the price of stamps. I'm a mean old bugger and my wife agrees with me.

We managed to get away with posting about a dozen of ours and handed over the rest.

My friend is getting married next year and was told by plenty of people that it would be absolutely fine to put the Save the Date cards in Christmas Cards (or to write it in as a message), but she posted all of those separately too - must have cost a fortune.

Yeah, I didn't do cards this year and I told people not to bother sending me one. Any I did get went straight in the bin.

I sound like a right miserable old bag!

Not any more. They have tight fisted relatives.

There wasn't a postal strike, just a Counter staff strike. Would have no affect on post.

I had a card from one of my cousins, completely out of the blue as we've never been in regular contact and the last time I remember seeing or speaking to her was my Aunt's funeral about eight or nine years ago.

The fewer the better. I haven't sent them for a few years yet some of the same people who know this still send them. I prefer to donate to charity instead.
In most cases it's nothing more than an annual waste of money sign that they're still alive or they enclose their tedious protracted annual family success fest/report when we haven't clapped eyes on them for decades or heard from them in any other way.

My brother puts them up on the mantlepiece to make him look more popular.

Actually this reminds me of when I temped at Royal Mail, when doing 'return to sender' mail one of the best ones I saw was "The Johnson family moved out fifteen years ago UPDATE YOUR F***ING RECORDS"

No I haven't and I feel awkward about calling them to ask if they sent one when they always do.

It's not about them not sending a card but whether they've gone missing because it's unusual for five to go, one I can understand but not that amount and especially when I usually receive eighteen from regulars.

But they can only go missing if they were sent, unless you know they were sent then they are not really missing. A card that was not posted is not missing its not been sent.

I know they were sent because they send them every year and like i said I could accept one person not sending but not five.

You dont know they were sent, you are guessing they were sent because of being sent every year, for royal mail to look into it it would need to be comfirmed they were sent and the only way to do this is for you to speak to the people you were exepecting them from, as i said not lost or missing till confirmed they were sent.

My god, I only asked if anybody has had similar happen this Christmas and you go all Spanish inquisition on me.

Please don't bother to reply again.

It's falling into place now.

I was talking about this only today. The week before Christmas I took 20 cards to the village post office, bought 20 second class stamps, affixed them to the envelopes and then the counter clerk kindly took the envelopes from me so I wouldn't have to post them, yet I didn't receive a single Christmas card from anyone I sent one to that day. That to me looks suspicious. All of these cards were from boxed sets and were of standard size and shape and the correct postage had been paid. I'm beginning to wonder if any of them were actually delivered. You hear about letters being dumped. I hope that wasn't the case here.

We've been getting fewer and fewer cards as the years go on. I've also stopped sending as many. I think it is what is happening in general for most people.

How do you know they were sent if you haven't spoken to the people concerned?
And it's certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that 5 people have decided not to send cards the same year.

Quite a few of our sent ones went missing this year and vice versa. Royal Mail here were really struggling to collect from the postbox and get stuff delivered in time. Lots of cards here for the wrong address.

I think some of it has to do with the major contract pressures from Amazon (other online retailers too, but especially them, as all their stuff was superfast with no mistakes for the first time ever), and the fact more folk aren't chancing late gifts/orders and using Special Next Day Delivery.

I now know for certain that one of the 20 cards I posted was delivered, and apparently a card was send to me too, but I never got it. A few of my friends are in their 80s, so might have died in the last year, but as for the others, who knows!